Wednesday, May 31, 2017

California’s Single-Payer Health Care Plan Would Cost More Than the State’s Whole Budget

Like in Colorado, New York, and Vermont, California is learning that a single-payer plan would be prohibitively expensive.

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A state considers implementing a single-payer health care system, then learns it would have to use its entire annual budget, plus some, to fund the idea.

The latest stop on this magical mystery tour of progressive health care plans is California, where U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has been campaigning on behalf of a proposed state-run single-payer system. On Monday, state lawmakers in Sacramento got their first look at the price tag for the proposal, which rings in at a whopping $400 billion annually.

The Sacramento Bee notes that, even after accounting for an estimated $200 billion that could be saved by replacing current state-run health programs with the single-payer program, the state would still need to come up with $200 billion annually.

This year's state budget in California, by the way, is about $180 billion. That means that implementing a single-payer health care system would require doubling (at least) the state's current tax burden. The analysis of the health care proposal presented to lawmakers on Monday suggests a 15 percent increase to the state's payroll tax to provide the necessary revenue.

The cost analysis is seen as "the biggest hurdle to creating a universal system," the Bee reports. ...